If only we could change fate
by Juulna
Summary: Rey considered it a curse, and hoped that the fact that she was seventeen with no words blazing a path across her skin meant that she would never have to feel the pain of knowing her soulmate only upon her or their death. But no. No, she wasn't lucky enough to get none. Instead, she received two burning marks upon her forearms. [Almost only Finnrey with some hints at others]


**Note: This work is disclaimed.**

 ** _******Please, pleeeease understand this fic contains major character death.******_**

 **I was suddenly inspired to write this when I came across a soulmate prompt (a very evil one) I'd saved to my pc. Based on past talks with smols-darklighter, I decided to write the prompt as a Finnreylo ship. Well, it's Finnrey, but... you'll see what I mean.**

 **Thank you to Annaelle and Perry_Downing for assisting with the idea and beta work for this.**

 **I hope you like it and don't hate me too much!**

* * *

It happened to everyone when they reached puberty. Rey didn't know why she thought she'd be any different, but she had desperately held onto the hope that she would be one of the lucky few... though, to most of the world, they were considered the unlucky few - the Soulless.

Those without words upon their skin; those without soulmates.

Unlike those with words seared upon their flesh who knew that the words would either be the last their partners heard before death overtook them, or before death took the other instead. Either way, death would follow in one form or another, for one partner or the other, once the words writ upon their skin were uttered.

Many considered the idea of soulmates a romantic one, but...

No.

Rey considered it a curse, and hoped that the fact that she was seventeen with no words blazing a path across her skin meant that she would never have to feel the pain of knowing her soulmate only upon her or their death.

It was a cruel, absolutely cruel world, in which sentients would only ever know true happiness, with the knowledge that the partner they'd been with for years and years perhaps... that they would only ever know that the other was their soulmate upon their partner's death.

Or worse yet... that they had never been. That the person they had spent their life with was not theirs, and that the other was still out there.

Rey wished fervently, every night she stared up at the stars above her from the sand plains of Jakku, that she could be spared that pain. That she could be Soulless.

But no. After years of malnutrition, a lucky run of scrap traded for a veritable feast of food rations that would last her weeks... her body finally caught up to her.

Rey hardly paid attention to the blood, dark crimson upon her fingers beneath the slivers of light from the moons above her.

Instead, she was focused on the burning sensation of words being writ upon her forearm... then the other.

Two marks.

She didn't even look at them. She covered them up immediately with long scraps of linen hoarded carefully for a medical emergency.

She didn't want to know what the words said.

She vowed then and there to never look.

* * *

The boy she met - Finn he said his name was - was enigmatic and high-spirited. He was unlike anyone she had ever met before, containing more life than any of the dejected souls living on Jakku. She could tell immediately that her life was going to change, and she didn't need the TIE-fighters shooting at them as they ran for their lives to tell her that.

Rey smiled even as she ran the hardest she'd ever run before.

The feeling was enough to - at least temporarily - shove down her concern about leaving Jakku behind her.

She'd waited too long, anyway.

It was time to admit that no one was coming for her, even as her mind put forth a token protest.

Rey squashed it with another upwelling of manic excitement as she expertly piloted the junker out of orbit, leaving the smoke of TIE-fighters in their wake.

* * *

She woke.

Rey hadn't even been sure she _would_ wake. The last she had seen, frozen in the forest, was a man, reminiscent of the Sith from legends, focused on her... bent on _her_ destruction.

Or her capture it would seem, she realized as soon as she opened her eyes.

She struggled to suppress her surprise and fear as her eyes landed upon the creature, the dark-robed... _man_... who was crouched against the wall before her, his mask tilted towards her. She could only assume he was watching her... _waiting_ for her.

She held her ground. She defended her mind in a way she'd never known she could, even as she invaded _his_ mind.

What she saw astounded her; it floored her.

And yet she pressed forward.

If you could call what she did winning... well, she won that round.

But she was left with memories that weren't her own - memories that made her want to weep and scream and right the injustice of the world that had chosen this... _child_... as its whipping boy.

And she was left with the knowledge that hidden beneath his armor - armor against more than just weapons - were two sets of words he hoarded close to himself, letting no one else see them.

Who could love a demon such as he? Which poor souls were shackled to the broken boy, or were they as evil as he?

There was no time for questions like that, though. No time for musings on things even she abhorred thinking of. So she shuttered her mind and focused on her escape. Focused her mind, blocking out the empathy she never thought she'd have for such a creature, and went about her business of destroying a world-ending weapon.

* * *

The man - the boy - the monster... he killed his father. His father's lifeblood was on the tormented boy's soul. For tormented he was. A part of her felt sorry for him. A part of her knew that he was being controlled, manipulated... torn apart from inside and out. The part of her that had seen deep inside of him.

She knew it, and yet still she hated him.

She hated him with a passion she'd never felt before.

A passion, in a way, that confused her.

* * *

There was an energy pulling and twisting between the three of them as they fought in the forest. In turns the energy was buzzing with joy, but also with sorrow, as they fought, chased, tripped, slashed, attacked, retreated, and burned and maimed each other.

Rey could barely focus on counteracting the monster attacking her because of the feelings buzzing through her body. The only thing that saved her was listening to her instincts, and shunting aside the knowledge that her instincts were new and coming from the memories she had... stolen... from her enemy.

She could barely focus, and so she barely managed to subdue him. There was no time to finish him off - and her mind screamed at her not to; no, no, _no_! - and instead she ran to Finn, barely escaping the planet weapon's surface with the aid of the grieving Chewbacca.

She couldn't help looking back.

Yet there was another force pulling at her, calling to her from within the ship.

She took one last look at the crumbling ground within the forest - the forest that hid a mystery she simply couldn't shake - and then closed the ramp, turning to her injured friend... perhaps her _only_ friend in the entire galaxy.

It felt like she was turning her back on a part of her life, though, only to walk towards another part of her very soul.

She tried desperately to focus only on Finn.

* * *

Meeting Leia Organa for the first time was one of the most bittersweet moments in Rey's life.

Making sure her arm coverings were cleaned and wrapped tightly around her after a quick shower, she descended the ramp of the _Falcon_ alone, scared, and desperate to race after Finn's prone form as he was taken away by medical staff who pushed her aside.

Leia and her gravitated towards each other - and Rey had to shove aside the double vision of her from Kylo Ren's childhood memories - as if a galactic force was pulling them together. Rey felt something wrench inside of her, but she knew that the princess already knew what had happened.

No, this was something else.

As Leia Organa, mother of Ben Organa, now the murderous Kylo Ren, enveloped her in her arms, Rey felt more torn than ever, and she had no idea why.

* * *

Rey was pulled forcibly from the side of Finn, the charismatic but somewhat off-putting Poe promising her that he would take good care of their friend, and sent on her way to meet the legendary Luke Skywalker.

He refused the lightsaber, the one that felt… odd, but also absolutely _right_ in her hands, greeted her with a clasp of the hands… and then looked at her oddly.

It wasn't just that she was so strong in the Force, as she had come to accept. No… there was something more. Something that resonated along the same lines as when Rey had been hugged by Leia, but nowhere near as strong as when she'd been in the vicinity of their son and nephew, _Ben_.

He just looked at her, an odd light in his eyes, something almost… hopeful. Then he retreated to his cabin, allowing her to follow him, and meditated the rest of the night.

They left for D'Qar in the morning, neither having said a word, Luke seeming like he knew exactly what to think, and Rey left reeling at what her life had become.

* * *

They trained.

In time, Rey opened up to him, and to others.

But she never took her arm wraps off where anyone could see. She never looked at the words upon her skin. She just couldn't bear it. She didn't want to know. Not ever.

There were more important things in this galaxy; in this life.

So she focused on training, on readying herself to face the threat that Snoke, the First Order… and Kylo Ren and his Knights… to face the threat that they represented to everything Rey was coming to hold dear.

And after training, when her mind, body, and soul tugged at her to sit by Finn's bed… she didn't resist, not even once.

* * *

They ran into each other in a market, faces uncovered, hands flitting to rest on their 'saber hilts once they recognized each other. The Force spun around them, electrified, and their hair started to stand on end. They stepped towards each other, one slow step at a time, the air vibrating between them, and the vendors and shoppers standing in their way slowly making their way out of what their instincts told them was a danger zone.

Rey didn't want to fight him, even though her body vibrated with the need, and everything Master Luke had told her, and her experiences in the past… all of that told her she should attack - that she should take this chance, when he had no allies around him, to strike him down.

Before she knew it, he was immediately in front of her, his left hand, ungloved, hovering beside her flushed cheek.

Something sparked, and Rey was too afraid of what it meant, so she ran. She ran as far away from him as she could, but even the distance hyperspace gave her was not enough to outrun the memories flooding through her mind.

His memories. Memories of a boy who was soft, and precocious, and which made it nearly impossible for her to think of him as anything other than sympathetic.

Rey clutched her head between her hands, unable to reconcile the boy she knew as well as her own childhood self… with the horrible monster he had become.

* * *

Finn was awake when she returned, being helped around the compound by Poe and a back brace that was assisting with his healing.

Rey's heart soared - more than she ever expected it would to see a man she barely knew, but he was her _friend_ \- and she ran towards him and Poe with happiness in her mind and soul, and a smile upon her face.

Finn let go of Poe's arm, his balance faltering only slightly before he was overtaken by Rey's arms enveloping him fully. She pulled him tightly against her chest, her face buried into his neck, and she simply breathed in the scent of… well, of _him_.

It was home, in a way that Jakku never had been.

His smile, and Poe's smile at the both of them when they pulled back, made everything feel right in the galaxy. The darkness within her mind receded, little by little.

They never let go of each other, in one way or another, during the rest of the way back to the infirmary.

Her smile lasted through her training for the evening - Luke slanting her bemused looks out of the corner of his eye - and all the way to the moment her head hit the pillow and sleep overcame her.

* * *

The weeks grew into months. Training took over her life and, surprisingly, Finn joined her and Luke from the moment he was cleared from the med bay.

Not as strong as Rey, no, but Luke's foresight had told him that he was integral to defeating a great evil.

Rey didn't ask him about the sadness in his eyes when he told them that bit of news.

She had learned over the course of her lifetime that sometimes she just didn't need to know everything.

And in this case, much like her wrapped arms, she was more than happy to add it to the list of things she didn't _want_ to know.

* * *

They spent so much time together, were closer to each other than they were with anyone else on base, that it didn't surprise either of them when he kissed her for the first time beside the lake outside the compound.

They'd been enjoying the sunshine on a rare full day off, watching Poe and Jessika swim in the lake, when they just turned towards each other, shared a look, and then collided fiercely together, no gentleness to be found except for when their lips finally parted.

Their eyes met and held, the Force swirling around them in what could only be described as happiness, and then they smiled and kissed again.

Rey wasn't sure if her arm was tingling more than the rest of her, or if it was just her imagination.

Instead of focusing on that, she deepened the kiss, and put the thought from her mind in favor of her newfound happiness.

That was all that mattered, she told herself.

She wasn't sure who she was trying to convince.

* * *

Rey, Finn, and Luke cut a swath through the First Order, growing stronger together as a master-padawan triad, and she and Finn growing ever closer in the Force and with each other.

The first time they encountered a Knight of Ren, she and Finn collectively caught and held their breaths, thinking that it was… that it was _him_.

They cut the Knight down with very little compunction, Rey ignoring the relief she felt at the knowledge it wasn't the man they'd thought the Knight was.

She squashed that treacherous thought as far as it would go.

But it didn't disappear completely.

* * *

They did meet him one night, however, late during a battle between the First Order and the Resistance, when he and a cohort of stormtroopers and two other Knights landed to assist their failing troops.

The reinforcement worked. The Resistance was pushed back, ready to retreat from the planet's surface, but not before Rey, Finn, and Kylo stared each other down, a mere clearing of trees separating them.

Finn took a running start towards him, yellow lightsaber raised in a form that was easily parried by Kylo Ren - but not as easily as the first time they had encountered each other.

Rey was about to step in, to make it two against one, when the Force told her to stop; told her to watch. Finn and Kylo's sabers were locked, sparking and hissing, but they stood staring at each other, making no other movements.

The moment stretched on and on, a thick feeling overtaking the clearing that they were in until Rey felt she could nearly choke on the air surrounding them.

Suddenly, Kylo disengaged and ran through the forest, away from them and towards the battle.

Finn slumped, but turned towards Rey, his eyes wide above the glow of his lightsaber. "Was that… That was… I…"

"I know," was all Rey could say in return. She stepped towards him, slowly, and turned off both of their 'sabers before pulling him into her arms. She spoke, muffled, into his hair, "I know. It's… No. I don't know. I don't know what's going on."

"Do you want to know?" Finn asked. "You have… your arms…"

"No," Rey said sharply, holding him even tighter against her. "There's no way."

Finn had shown her his marks, two sets seared across his ribs, long ago, but he had never before pried into the ones he knew she had. He had never once asked her to take her arm coverings off, even at night, even in the cradle of his arms. He was too polite for that, and she loved him all the more for it. She loved him even more because he helped her to keep them covered, turned his eyes away… respected her choice. Loved her as much as she loved him.

But… even if she showed him, even if she looked at them for the first time… there was no use. It wasn't like the marks were useful. They couldn't tell her, them, anything - not until the very end.

Plus, well… she didn't want to know. She never did.

* * *

The war raged.

Over a year had passed.

There was a lot of back and forth, but the Resistance was winning. They would have won sooner, except for the Knights of Ren. Except for… except for their Master. To get to Snoke, the heart of the Order, they had to go through Kylo Ren, Master of the Knights of Ren, who were still over forty strong. They had to go through Kylo Ren, who also happened to be Ben Organa, the beloved general's son.

As if that weren't complicated enough, every time Finn or Rey, or both, encountered him, they couldn't press any advantage they had against him, or he with them. They were at an impasse, and it clearly frustrated each of them in their own way.

Instead, they traded blows when they had to, and kept far away from each other as often as they could.

Neither Finn nor Rey ever brought up their thoughts as to the reason why.

Not even to each other, not in words.

But in their eyes, in their traded glances… There. There they acknowledged the possibility of what they refused to speak aloud.

* * *

But fate had a way of forcing hands.

Sirens blared across the base, and Rey and Finn scrambled from their warm nest of blankets piled on a mattress on the floor, ready and alert as soon as their bare feet touched the ground, and reaching for their clothes and weapons to strap onto their bodies even as they raced towards the door of their shared quarters.

Days later, they stood face to face with Snoke, Kylo Ren between them, Luke at their backs, and a battlefield and solar system filled with carnage and desolation behind them.

This was it. This was the end of the line. Nowhere to go but forward, either into death, or into victory.

Both were a sort of freedom, Rey supposed.

Win-win for the individual, but there was an unbelievable chance of loss for the rest of the people in the galaxy.

She and Finn squared their shoulders, touched hands briefly for what could possibly be the last time, raised their weapons, and Kylo Ren did the same.

Blue and yellow lightsabers flashed against red, sparks flying and vibrations thrumming through the air around them. They were majestic to watch, even though they were timid at first, if Jedi padawans and a dark side Knight fighting could ever be called timid.

But Rey and Finn noticed that the closer they pushed Kylo Ren towards Snoke - who was fighting viciously against Luke - the fiercer he fought. It was as if… as if…

Finn pushed forward, reading Rey's intention, and fended off the Knight so that Rey could momentarily close her eyes, focusing inwards on the Force. When she opened her eyes, she could see a tether between Kylo Ren and Snoke, one that grew wider and wider the closer they got towards Kylo's Master. The fury of his fighting grew the closer they got, the rage building up within him, venting outwards towards Rey and Finn, nearly overwhelming the…

… nearly overwhelming the soft grey links that connected her and Finn… and Kylo. _Ben._

 _No._ No, it couldn't be… all this time spent covering her arms, when all she had to do was look into the Force. _No_ , she repeated to herself, shoving the knowledge aside. _No. Never._

"Not to _him_!" Rey cried out, even though she and Finn had guessed it, had thought it, but had never spoken what now blazed to her the truth through the Force.

They were soul-

And she had just spoken three of the words upon Finn's body.

No!

She surged forward just as Finn yelled out for her, panic and recognition in his voice. "Rey! I need you! I can't hold him off for-" Finn's eyes went wide as his words were cut off prematurely. He screamed, then gurgled, blood sputtering from his mouth. His eyes connected with hers even as the life drained from them, his body slumping forward as the red saber was pulled from his body.

But before the life was fully gone from him, Finn's body twitched in recognition as Kylo screamed out in horror. "It can't be you! You were just a stormtrooper!"

Rey just stood there, barely acknowledging that Kylo's words were the exact ones spread like a brand across the ribs of her precious Finn. Her precious Finn, who was growing cold before her very eyes. Rey just stood there, unable to do anything else. She was frozen, her eyes staying with Finn's, with the eyes of the love she'd never thought she'd ever find as a lost child on Jakku.

With the knowledge which she had just gained, of the grey tethers connecting her and Finn… and the man who had murdered her beloved. The man whose last words uttered, before Finn's life force had blinked out of the Force, were words that Rey knew by heart. She had traced them across Finn's skin in the comfort of their bed, more times than she could count, wishing desperately that she could change what the words said.

She could feel the dark side roiling inside of her - Finn had been the only thing keeping it at bay in recent months, holding her and soothing her when she felt it creeping into her mind, wrapping around her with insidious tendrils. And now he was _gone_. She closed her eyes tightly, trying desperately to control her breathing, to control and keep away the darkness; to keep it from controlling _her_.

"I… No! Not him! How could it have been _him_ all these years!?" Kylo Ren's horrified shout intruded on the calm Rey was attempting to instill within her mind.

It intruded… and it sparked. It sparked anger, rage, sorrow, and despair, and Rey thought, disconnected from everything, that despair was the more dangerous of the emotions swirling within her.

And then there was nothing. Nothing but an icey blankness. There was nothing but white noise filling her ears, but her eyesight was sharper than ever as she lifted her eyes to focus on the Knight of Ren on his knees beside her friend, her lover, her, her… _everything_.

She stalked slowly towards where the Knight was folded over himself, body shuddering, but Rey couldn't hear whatever it was that he was doing, or saying, because the darkness was filling everything inside of her, taking over even the burning inside her heart and upon her arms beneath her armguards.

She took that burning feeling and grew it within her, fanning its flames to life, filling every nook and cranny inside her body and mind, and pulling the Force around her. She felt more power than she ever knew she could have within her at one time, and she pulled it in, tighter and tighter, more and more, needing more power so that she could kill the man who'd in turn killed the one who had shown her love for the first time in her life - and had kept showing it to her, time and time again.

She knew this was the only way she could kill the monster. Without her partner, the one who completed her, who she'd trained with for just this purpose… she would need this power.

Just this once, she promised herself. _For Finn_.

Kylo looked up at her, his mask having disappeared during her shut down, his eyes red and raw, and his hair in a wild disarray. A part of her mind connected this face he was showing her with the lost little boy she'd seen in their shared memories, but she was beyond caring; beyond any compassion she had held for him before. "I didn't… I didn't _know_ , R-Rey… I didn't know he was my… my… s-soul- If I had-" He held his hands out in supplication, dropping his still-glowing lightsaber from his shaking fingers as his overflowing eyes met hers. He pulled at his tabard, his tunic, and finally his undershirt, tearing them rather than break eye contact with the advancing padawan who had murder in her heart. She caught a flash of words marring the paleness of his chest as his nails scrabbled at them as if he could change exactly what they said.

But she could afford no distraction.

Rey's eyes bore into Kylo Ren's, ignoring everything but the darkness she was truly embracing for the first time, but she still took the last two steps towards him slowly, menacingly, a growl upon her lips even as he continued to cry, desperately, like the lost little boy he truly was.

"You took him from me," was all she could manage to utter on a whisper.

He looked up at her, shocked brown orbs wide in surprise, opened his mouth as if to speak - and he died with his words unfinished upon his lips, Rey's blue 'saber slicing clean in and out of his heart with a swift and ruthless stabbing motion.

If there hadn't been another threat in the room, she would have relished in prolonging his death.

Instead, coldness in her heart, glacier ice spreading through her veins, she turned towards where Luke was still battling Snoke, green against red.

As she strode towards them, 'saber held at the ready out to her side, she felt a burning sensation overtake both of her forearms, hot and painful in counterpoint to the ice overtaking the rest of her.

She knew what it was. She'd always known, even if she'd always denied herself the actual acknowledgment. And now… and now she knew she would never look.

She couldn't look now - she would _never_ ever look at the words upon her skin - not now, even after seeing the grey links between the three of them earlier. Not now, after having glimpsed her and Finn's last words spoken to Kylo Ren slashed across the paleness of his chest. Not now, knowing that one soulmate had killed the other, and she, the last of three, was all that was left.

But for how long, that remained to be seen.

A single tear was all she allowed herself to shed - for Finn, for Kylo, for the child, Ben, he had been, and the man he _could_ have been… and even for herself.

She met Luke's gaze, but looked away immediately at the sadness she found within them, and instead relied upon the instincts they had honed together in training and battle since this had all begun.

It was time to finish this war - this war that had taken everything from her that she had gained, and even that which she hadn't but _could_ have had.

Rey and Luke lept forward, him silently snarling, and she screaming out all of the cold yet incandescent rage within her.

There was nothing left except killing Snoke.

Soon enough, there was nothing.

Nothing at all.

* * *

 **Note: The prompt, transposed from the image, is as follows -**

 **Aceofultron: soulmate au where instead of your soulmates first words to you written on your skin it's their last words you ever hear them say so you don't know who your soulmate is until you lose them**

 **Egberts: what if you spent your entire life with a person and when they die that's not what they say**

 ***I can be found on Tumblr Juuls.**


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